There were some positives – New boss Luke Williams happy with Swansea’s victory

Posted Sunday, January 07, 2024 by PA

New Swansea manager Luke Williams was satisfied with his side’s 2-0 FA Cup third round win against Morecambe.

Second-half goals from Charlie Patino and Jerry Yates saw the Sky Bet Championship club into the fourth round despite a somewhat laboured performance.

Williams was only unveiled two days ago, joining from League Two Notts County after the Swans hierarchy took more than a month to appoint a successor to sacked Michael Duff.

Williams said: “There were some positives with things that I saw from the short amount of time I have worked with the players.

“There were also some things that I saw they struggled to implement, not because anyone isn’t good enough, just because there are a lot of small changes that take time.

“We will look at the game back and show the players what we want.

“We created enough chances to have scored a few more and the clean sheet was not an accident because we prevented the opposition from having a shot on target.”

Williams heaped praise on assistant Alan Sheehan for his work as caretaker boss since Duff’s departure.

He added: “I had conversation with Alan and asked him where he was at with the preparation.

“He suggested a very sensible team in terms of giving the correct amount of minutes to certain players.

“Alan has been incredible. He put the team in a great place when it could have been in a terrible place when I arrived.

“But I came in and he had got everybody in a good place and had a grasp on everything. I am very fortunate he did so much. He is a great guy.”

Williams, 42, who began his career in coaching at Swindon, appeared relieved to have come through the assignment against a side 49 places below Swansea in the Football League.

“They are competitive in League Two, they are strong and have experienced players,” he said.

“Looking at the statistics of the game, it looks like the way I want to play. We dominated the game, put the ball into the box a lot and created chances.

“Can we now do that cleaner, better, sharper, more accurately in league games? I hope so.”

Goalscorer Patino, meanwhile, was singled out for praise by his new boss.

“I said to Charlie at half-time he is an attacking midfielder and he has to create and score goals, not just be in the middle of the pitch,” said Williams.

“In the final third, an attacking midfielder is a killer. The longer it went with us not scoring, the more vulnerable we were.

“He then went back out and did exactly what I wanted by scoring the goal.

“After that we moved the ball correctly and saw the game out.”